Summer starts cool and cloudy in Washington

The unusually damp, dark weather this month is testing even the most die-hard Northwest native accustomed to rain and clouds.

It's not the coldest or wettest June that Seattle has seen, but it's edging close to it.

This is the longest stretch into the calendar year where temperatures at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport has not hit 75-degrees, said Washington state climatologist Nick Bond.

"My tomatoes aren't very happy. My lawn is doing great, but so are the slugs," said Bond, a University of Washington research meteorologist.

The first day of summer in Washington is cloudy with a chance of showers, temperatures below normal and a forecast for more of the same.

"We are in a cool and unsettled pattern," said Dennis D'Amico, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Seattle. "It has been unusually cool, cloudy and wet, but it's not the wettest yet and it's probably not going to be the coolest yet."

D'Amico said Seattle is now in 8th place for the all-time wettest June, based on rain measurements taken at Sea-Tac since 1945.

Forecasters say the best chance of sun in Washington may be a midweek break in the pattern. Low temperatures this week will be mostly in the 50s with highs reaching the low 70s in Western Washington and 80s in Eastern Washington.

Along the Washington coast, wind patterns have resembled winter more than summer, Bond said.

In Spokane, heavy rains have been falling since Sunday. Forecasters expect a break in the storms starting on Tuesday. But highs are forecast only in the 50s and 60s for the region Monday.

In Kittitas County, the weather has put hay growers on edge and workers hurried last week to cover newly baled grass.

"Usually, in a regular season, we'd be cutting right now and beginning to bale," hay grower Bob Haberman told the Ellensburg Daily Record last week. "The cool weather and rain has put everything behind by at least 10 days."

Bond, the state climatologist, said there's really not much to explain why this June has been so cool and gray. You can't blame El Nino, he said, "we've just been dealt a pretty bad hand."

The extra rain and delayed snowpack melt, however, has been good for the region's water supply and hydropower generation, Bond said.

There's no reason to despair, he said, "it's a new deal of the cards every few weeks."